It was ok, I guess - I have this issue with losing attention in the middle until it gets good again with his books. So far the only one that has held me from start to finish has been The Scar.

The Review Can Also Be Found Here

China Miéville is one of my favourite authors thanks to his excellent work but I am seriously behind on his fiction. I love Un Lun Dun, Perdido Street Station and The City and the City but I’ve never read King Rat before so decided to remedy that when I saw it on the shelf at the library and managed to finish it off over the course of a few days. It’s literally that good, and a compelling urban fantasy that reminded me of the Pied Piper of Hamelin legend and makes excellent use of the mythology and urban landscape of London. It’s great from start to finish, and thanks to the excellent writing, comes highly recommended.

Miéville introduces you to the protagonist Saul, who is the number one suspect in his father’s murder. However, Saul gets pulled into a strange and surreal world by the being known as King Rat, and in this new landscape it’s interesting to watch things play out like they do, taking us on a tour of the rat-infested London underground, with drum and bass music also featuring pretty well.

Even though this may be Miéville’s first novel it’s an excellent debut, and if you like urban fantasies set in London then King Rat will be right up your street and if you’re a drum and bass fan I can imagine you’ll enjoy this as well. There’s a lot of things to like here and although it may not quite be as good as the author’s later works it marks a great building point that leads onto further excellent titles. Like pretty much all of the author’s fiction King Rat is a standalone title so you do not have to read anything after this, and it ends on an open ended note with a nice epilogue following the closure of the main story.

If you’re put off by how big Miéville’s later books get then this one might be for you, it’s short, quick and easy to read and fans of Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere will enjoy this one a lot. It’s engaging even if it does suffer from a lack of depth particularly for the villains in places, but on the whole, King Rat is an excellent and really enjoyable read that’s worth checking out if you like Miéville, Gaiman or just love good urban fantasy.

Compelling storyline (love a reinvention of a traditional fairytale), but occasionally the descriptive writing obscured the narrative and impeded the overall flow.

What an amazing book. Fast paced, not quite fantasy, not quite anything you've read before. Beautifully written.

I liked it until the references to The Piper of Hamelin became too overt, after which the whole concept started feeling silly. The main thing that kept me reading was the drum'n'bass references. Reading the climax at the end felt like a chore.

Mieville is one of my top 5 authors but almost entirely because of his Bas-Lag novels. The others I've found cool and fun but not as good. This one was no exception. It was dark, gritty, disgusting, violent and original but not totally my kind of thing. I loved Lop Lop.

I didn't fully understand the entire music angle until the end so it felt like it was just added because he was into that kind of music (Jungle). I was also never sure how Anansi's powers worked.

After reading this book, I:
1. Will never see rats the same way again. I kinda want their superpower, including strong stomach.
2. Will save money to visit London. Gosh darn it, Mieville, stop seducing me with your atmospheric description of London and what might lie beneath/in between the city. I acquiesce.
3. Will try to reduce buying paperback editions since it actually hurts my hand to hold it, even though I am already using a book holder. E-books FTW! Save the environment!

This is Mieville's first published novel and I did like it, an interesting retelling of the Pied Piper legend. Obviously I have some complaints, like when I got lost trying to figure out character's motivation, some horrible unexpected violence (this is probably his goriest novel), and his tendency of being purple with less poetic quality as in his other novels, which probably more verbose but so delicious to digest.

Yikes, I am running out Mieville books to read. [b:This Census-Taker|25489159|This Census-Taker|China Miéville|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1439829142l/25489159._SX50_.jpg|45263607] is next.

Full Review: http://www.tenaciousreader.com/2014/06/25/king-rat-by-china-mieville/

King Rat is festering with atmosphere and drowns you in a cacophony of Jungle Bass and Drum. It takes you to London’s underside, it’s stinking bowels, and gives life to the world below. It does all this in a very good way. I swear. King Rat is my first taste of Mieville and I’m still not sure if it was the best place for me to start, but it certainly isn’t a bad place to start. This is his debut novel and does not seem to be as widely read or recommended. I have also heard that it is a bit different from the rest of his novels. Since I obviously have not read the others, I can’t comment on that myself. But I can share what I thought of King Rat.

My largest comment is that I love his atmospheric descriptions. You could just feel the malodorous sludge coagulating and dripping, see the colors and wonders (and horrors) of the city of London, and most importantly, you could hear and feel and practically live the rhythms of the Jungle Bass and Drum music that is prominently featured in the story. Within all of this (and keep in mind, his descriptions work way better than my feeble attempts), I could see brilliance that I am sure is carried over to his other works. In these descriptions, I could easily understand the fan base he has acquired.

Now, before anything else, I want to be clear that for a first novel, this really is a great debut. However, I also felt at times some of his scenes drug on for entirely too long. There is a bike ride that is so detailed I think it would put my GPS turn-by-turn directions to shame for being so simple and minimalistic. I think every turn and street name needed was in the book in addition to what felt like an inordinate number of landmarks along the way. It was not a huge deal, but it did pull me out of the story a bit, it seemed to go beyond what was a descriptive setting to an info dump of how to get from point X to point Y in London and everything you might see in between.

I also found the accent/dialogue from one of the characters (Anansi) a bit grating and kind of hard to read. I think if I was familiar with the accent he was trying to get across, it would have flowed much better, but since I wasn’t it just read very awkward. Luckily, he did not have much to say. And sometimes, it was short, and I didn’t have a problem. But if he had a paragraph worth of dialogue, chances are, I had to slow down my reading, and would get pulled out a bit to wonder what he was really supposed to sound like versus my awkward attempt at it. But, minor complaint. Really.

So, while I didn’t find this book without faults (at least for me as a reader), it was certainly still a positive reading experience. If your in the mood to explore the world below London (and have already read Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman), then definitely give this one try. Especially if you enjoy an atmospheric, descriptive book.

Enjoyed it - short and sweet. As a first novel it was quite good indeed and showed the path he would follow with the superlative New Crobuzon stories. Pretty good indeed.